


cause i'll be waiting

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Family Reunions, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lyra Likes To Meddle, Young Lyra Belacqua
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29070117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: When Lyra is seven, a woman with no dæmon claims scholastic sanctuary at Jordan College /or/ how Elaine Parry is the one to accidentally find a window and become trapped in Lyra's world. Lyra, naturally, sets out on an epic quest to find Elaine's missing family.
Relationships: Elaine Parry/John Parry, Lyra Belacqua & Roger Parslow, Lyra Belacqua & Will Parry
Comments: 14
Kudos: 23





	cause i'll be waiting

**Author's Note:**

> So this was a one-shot idea my brother had and Marie helped me plot so...I had to write it? Anyway. Seven year old Lyra is fun to write. Also the next chapter of my big WIP is coming very soon, I just had to get this off the brain first. The title is from "Little Runaway" by Celeste, which is a gorgeous song.
> 
> T/W: parents going missing, canonical violence towards a child (ie) Asriel.  
> 25/02/21: some small edits done for clarity.

“Lyra, girl! Get down from there this _instant!_ ”

Lyra freezes on the roof of the cloisters.

“Busted,” Pan whispers in her ear. He lands on the gable in front of her and twitches his wings.

“Can we run?” Lyra hisses back. She can see the Palmerian Professor striding across the quad, his gown billowing and snapping behind him. That walk never means anything good. The last time she saw that walk she and Roger were escaping the college after disrupting one of his tutorials, rattling the windows draped in stolen bedsheets and pretending to be ghosts. _She’s_ not scared of ghosts and she thought the students wouldn’t be either. Apparently not. It was an unexpected triumph – the downside, however, is that the Palmerian Professor, still relatively new to Jordan, has declared war _._

“It’s too steep,” Pan says. “Do you want to break your wrist again? You were _unbearable_ for _months._ ”

Before she can make a decision as to what is worse – a broken wrist or whatever horrible chore the Palmerian Professor will have dreamed up as a punishment this time – his rook dæmon has flown up and caught Pan by the tail. Pan wriggles and squeals and tries to turn into something bigger, but she’s got a firm grip of his feathers and he can’t. The rook can’t say anything with her beak full of Pan, but the look in her glittering, black eyes is stern. Busted, indeed. Lyra pulls a ghoulish face at her but sits down and slides off the roof, climbing down the latticed stone window-frame and into one of the flowerbeds. The Palmerian Professor is waiting for her, arms folded and frowning. Lyra meets his eyes and folds her arms right back.

Several students are going back and forth looking intense and serious. One of them pulls a face at her behind the Professor’s back and she stifles a laugh.

“Lyra Belacqua,” the Palmerian Professor says and she returns her gaze to him, schools her face into a mask of perfect innocence. It’s only then that she notices the woman standing half-behind him. She has tawny-brown skin, her hair is in lots of braids like the Igbo woman in one of Lyra’s little-used books, and she’s wearing _really_ weird clothes. Her eyes are shiny and red but she manages a smile for Lyra.

Pan, finally free, turns into a kitten and skitters up to her, jumping into her arms.

“Where’s her _dæmon?_ ” he whispers.

“Maybe it’s small,” she replies under her breath.

“No,” Pan says again with more certainty. “She doesn’t have one, Lyra. I can’t feel it.”

Lyra shivers with gleeful revulsion at the thought and then realises that the woman is staring at her and Pan now like she’s never seen a dæmon before. It makes Lyra feel uneasy. People don’t stare at her. She likes being invisible to grown-ups. She can get away with more that way.

“Elaine, this young rapscallion is Lyra Belacqua. She’s a ward of the college,” the Palmerian Professor is saying in a much kinder tone of voice than he _ever_ uses on Lyra. Then, sterner: “Lyra, this is Mrs Parry. She’s going to be staying with us for a while. It is _very_ important that you don’t tell the children outside Jordan about her, do you hear me?”

“Why?” Lyra asks, sullen. Tales of a woman with no dæmon is just the kind of thing she needs to one-up those snooty kids who’ve just moved into St Sophia’s and – because they’re older – have promptly taken over as rulers of the Oxford rabble. She has to _stage a coup_ as she heard one of the students say, and no-one is more drawn to a horror story than the half-wild children of the colleges.

“Because if you do, the Magisterium are likely to break scholastic sanctuary, take her away, and murder her,” the Palmerian Professor says because he apparently does not believe in mollycoddling children.

Lyra blinks at him and shrugs. Mrs Parry should be able to look after herself. It’s her problem if she gets murdered, not Lyra’s. “Fine. Can I go?”

The Palmerian Professor raises an eyebrow. Lyra scuffs her foot. “Please may I go, sir?”

“Yes,” he says. “But not back on the roof do you hear me?”

“Yes, Professor,” Lyra says innocently, and then sprints past them in the direction of the chapel. She’ll be able to get up there without being spotted, and anyway he’ll be going inside for dinner soon and won’t be around to shout at her. She has to go scope out the nest she found to take Roger to when he’s done with dinner.

*

Despite the fact that Lyra doesn’t tell, the news gets out quite quickly that there is a woman with no dæmon living under scholastic sanctuary at Jordan. After she and Roger spy on Magisterium soldiers arguing with the Master, Lyra figures that Mrs Parry isn’t a secret anymore and proceeds to queen about the place, making up stories about her. She’s a witch, she’s a science experiment gone wrong, she’s a monster-or-a-devil. One time, crawling around under the table at the ancient Jordan drinking society that treats her like the college cat – something to feed and make a pet of – she learns that Mrs Parry is helping the Palmerian Professor with some experiments, and that even her uncle will be flying down to take a look. She wonders if her uncle will bring her anything from his latest expedition, and then promptly forgets about the whole affair, too caught up in being reinstated as the rightful ruler of her realm once she’d chased off those rude little pretenders to her throne.

Three months later, she is flying down the corridor away from the poor doctoral student sent to catch her when she misjudges a corner, overbalances and tumbles down hard onto the flagstones, gashing her knee on a loose drain cover. Shocked, she bursts into tears. Pan scrambles into her arms, puppy-shaped.

“Gosh, Lyra!” she hears, and she thinks it’s the doctoral student until she looks up and realises that Mrs Parry is kneeling down beside her, pretty skirts getting all dirty. “That was quite a fall! Are you ok?”

Lyra wipes her eyes. “I hurt my knee.”

“I can see that,” Mrs Parry says.

“Miss Belacqua,” the hapless doctoral student says, finally catching up with her, “I…ah.”

“It’s alright,” Mrs Parry tells him. “She’s just taken a fall. I’ll sort it out.”

“That’s very kind,” he stammers in an insultingly relieved way, his dæmon ruffling her brightly coloured feathers. Lyra doesn’t turn to watch him go. She allows Mrs Parry to help her up and holds her hand to limp down the corridor and up a small flight of stairs into an odd little nook of the Jerusalem building Lyra wrote off years ago as a boring lost cause. Mrs Parry unlocks the door and ushers Lyra in, gesturing vaguely to the dark blue divan tucked under the window. It’s comfortable, and Pan turns into an ermine to crawl around Lyra’s neck. She pets his fur and tries not to be scared. It’s one thing to _know_ you live in the same college as a woman with no dæmon and to have seen her with other adults around, but it’s totally another to be alone with her. What if all the stories Lyra’s been inventing are actually true?

“Why don’t you have a dæmon?” Lyra blurts as Mrs Parry finishes cleaning off Lyra’s knee and starts putting a stinging ointment onto it. “Ow!”

“I know, I’m sorry. You don’t want it to get infected,” Mrs Parry says. Then, “We don’t have them where I’m from.”

“Where’s _that_?”

Mrs Parry pauses, purses her lips as though she thinks she shouldn’t tell Lyra but really can’t be bothered not to. “Another world.”

“What?”

“There are multiple worlds,” Mrs Parry says, sounding quite tired, “all alongside us, right now. Mine is one of them. I accidentally fell through into this one.”

“No _way_ ,” Lyra breathes. She feels a little bubble of excitement rising in her chest. This is better than _anything_ she could have come up with. This is going to get her _so much_ respect amongst the townies. “Can I go to your world?”

“It’s too dangerous,” Mrs Parry says, and she blinks several times. Lyra scowls. Boring adults are always worried about danger. Things are only dangerous because they get scared and let them be dangerous. Even so, Lyra does know that there's little point pestering an adult about something they’ve decided is dangerous, so she toes her way back to safer ground.

“So you ain’t got souls in other worlds?”

That gets a smile, a small one. Mrs Parry’s fingers drift gently towards the centre of her chest, right above her heart. “No, we’ve got souls. They’re just hidden away in here, that’s all.”

“Weird.”

“Well you’re strange to me, too. So it goes. Would you like some hot chocolate?”

“Hot _what_?” Lyra stares at her, and then sees the flask and the cups and crows, “chocolatl! You mean chocolatl!”

“I always forget,” Mrs Parry says ruefully. “I can deal with the big things being different, but I never remember the little ones.”

She pours them both chocolatl and fetches some really nice biscuits, the kind that Lyra has stolen once or twice from the Covered Market before, and then sits down in the armchair opposite. They eat in silence for a bit. Lyra forgets that she’s supposed to be scared of Mrs Parry and forgets that her knee is hurting. Mrs Parry hasn’t told Lyra off for slouching or slurping or her dirty fingernails, which instantly makes her better than most of the adults in Lyra’s life.

“So, what do you like to do, Lyra?” Mrs Parry asks after a while, tapping her nails against her mug and fidgeting with the pretty pair of rings on her left hand.

Lyra needs no prompting to launch into a monologue of the current war going on between the college kids and the townies, and how they’ve allied themselves with St John’s and St Mary’s and Oriel and Trinity, but how she doesn’t trust those kids from Trinity, not one bit, not after they smeared mud all over Jordan’s walls and got her in trouble for it.

“But needs must,” she says, heavily. “Roger and I want to climb the tower at St Mary’s too. We’ve got to keep being friends with them.”

“You’re quite the adventurer, then,” Mrs Parry says admiringly.

Lyra straightens her shoulders and tosses her hair. “I am.”

“It’s very inspiring.” Mrs Parry glances towards her desk like she’s thinking about something. Lyra follows her gaze to the books and papers stacked all up on it.

“What are those?”

“My work,” Mrs Parry sighs. “Or lack thereof, right now. I’m a poet.”

Lyra nods sagely, wanting to appear clever. Luckily Pan comes to the rescue because he actually listens to the scholars. “like Karl Marx?”

“Yes like Karl Marx,” Lyra parrots.

Mrs Parry blinks at her, surprised for some weird reason. “Karl Marx is a _poet_?”

“Duh. The Chaplain reads him out all the time.”

“See, Karl Marx is a political philosopher in my world. He sparked a whole school of thought that's been massively influential...fascinating that something here was different."

Lyra doesn’t know or care what politics is. She knows it’s something to do with the King and priests and the Magisterium, but really, anything outside the borders of her world holds very little interest for her. “What do you write poems about?”

Mrs Parry blinks again, and then swallows hard. “Lots of things,” she says, her voice suddenly shaky. “Landscapes. Myths. Love.” A pause, “sometimes my husband and son.”

“You have a husband and son? Why ain’t they here?”

“Yes,” Mrs Parry says, and she presses her hand to her mouth briefly. Her shoulders shake. Lyra feels slightly alarmed, but luckily Mrs Parry just takes a deep breath and is fine again. “I do. My son, Will, he’s eight. Only a year older than you.”

She doesn’t answer Lyra’s other question, the one about why they’re not here with her. Married couples don’t live apart unless one of them died like Mrs Lonsdale the housekeeper’s husband or unless someone is running away. Lyra magnanimously decides to let Mrs Parry not answer. She’ll find out about it some other way; the students are sure to know.

“Will you write a poem about me?” she asks.

“If you want.”

“It’s a deal,” Lyra says, spitting in her hand and sticking it out. After a second, Mrs Parry shakes it, and when Lyra leaves, looking over her shoulder, she can see that Mrs Parry is smiling.

*

Elaine – _please don’t call me Mrs Parry, Lyra, I’m not my mother-in-law_ – is definitely not running away from her husband. Lyra works that out pretty quickly. Her student source of information says that Elaine came by accident and anyway, Elaine talks about her husband far too much to be running away from him. As the months tick over, Lyra takes to sneaking into Elaine’s office whenever she’s bored, and in return gets told as many stories about Elaine's husband as she wants. She hears that John Parry is an ex-soldier and a scientist and an explorer, that he studies where the universe came from, and makes lots of trips to all the corners of the world. Sometimes Elaine went with him, and when Will was born, he came too. Lyra, exceedingly jealous, tells Elaine all about her Uncle Asriel and his endless trips to the North and how he never even suggests that Lyra should come with him and how she wants to, more than anything in the world.

“Do you think she misses them?” Roger asks once, eighteen months later, as they sit and throw spit-balls down at passing students, their dæmons playing chase above their heads.

“Maybe,” Lyra shrugs. She hadn’t given it much thought.

“I would,” Roger says.

“You don’t have a husband or son,” Lyra points out. “How can you miss something you don’t have?”

“I miss my parents and brother sometimes,” Roger says quietly, which shuts Lyra right up because she doesn’t miss her parents. But then she didn’t ever know them, and anyway, parents would only make her do things she didn’t want to, like school or work. You can’t escape a parent the way you can an overweight scholar.

Even so, the thought of it won’t leave her alone, and she starts to pay attention to Elaine’s stories more.

“I think she does,” she tells Pan one night as they lie in bed. “I think she really, really misses them.”

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Pan says back. “I bet they miss her. She’s so nice.”

“Yeah,” Lyra says. “She is.”

*

One night, she and Pan are hanging around in the flowerbeds underneath the Master’s half-open sash window. It’s a hot night and she can’t sleep, so thought it would be fun to go and spy instead. Pan is a small bat, swooping through the night. Eventually he comes to settle on her shoulder.

“What are they saying?” he whispers, and they both lean in, expecting it to just be the Master and his servant, Cousins, but as they listen Lyra makes out a female voice. Elaine.

“I’m sorry, Dr Carne, I’m just…” she breaks off, takes a heavy breath. “It’s been over a year and-”

“Mrs Parry, we’ve talked about this.”

“I just want to send a message. I can’t stand the thought of John not knowing what happened. He doesn’t even know I’m _alive._ They can’t be guarding the window all the time.”

“There have been soldiers on the Trill Mill path without fail since you arrived.”

“You know people who could get past soldiers.”

“Elaine,” the Master says, softening. “I’m sorry. But we’re pushing enough boundaries already trying to keep you safe without causing more of a mess. I have a duty to the college. I cannot allow it.”

There’s a choked-off sob, and then Elaine says, “ok. I understand. I won’t ask again.”

They just begin talking about data and science after that so Lyra creeps carefully away from the window, and dashes across the quad in the direction of her room. She fetches her blanket and then climbs back onto the roof, Pan scampering behind her.

“She sounds so sad,” Pan says eventually as they sit in silent contemplation of the starry river above their heads.

“I know,” Lyra says, feeling the first stirrings of pity. She couldn’t ever imagine being trapped far away from Jordan College, her people, her life. She sits with it for a while, and then an idea starts to form, slowly, slowly, creeping into her peripheral vision.

“No,” Pan says.

“Come _on_ ,” Lyra says.

“No way, Lyra, we’ll get in so much trouble. What if we get caught?”

“We _never_ get caught.”

He sits in judgemental silence, flicking his tail.

“Ok well maybe sometimes,” Lyra concedes. “But we won’t this time. We know Oxford better than some stupid soldiers. And anyway, don’t you want to see another world?”

Pan swishes his tail a little longer, and then grudgingly says: “Sort of.”

“Well what are we waiting for?”

“You want to go _tonight_?”

“No time like the present,” Lyra says in the exact same tone Mrs Lonsdale uses when she’s trying to get Lyra into the bath.

“You are going to be the death of us,” Pan moans, but follows Lyra back down off the roof again and into her room. She’s feeling all fizzy and alive as she packs up a spare jumper and the tin of biscuits she stole from a stall the other day, laces up her shoes. Elaine says she’s an adventurer but all her adventures so far seem tame and boring compared to this. This is _really_ going to make her name.

“And get a message to John and Will,” Pan reminds her, flying in circles around her head. “Remember? That’s why we’re doing this.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lyra says, and puts on her rucksack. “Let’s go!”

Lyra is an expert at sneaking out of college, and soon enough they’re darting quick and careful through the darkening streets, hiding from the groups of drunken students and tradespeople who might recognise her and march her home. She passes her uncle’s fancy club on St Aldates that he’d taken her to a grand total of once when he’d needed to show her off to someone. Then it’s climbing the gate into Christchurch Meadow and running up the gravel path to where the dried out bed of the old Trill Mill stream starts, vaulting the barrier, and disappearing into the echoing depths. It’s nearly tall enough for her to walk upright in and she knows the route of it by heart; knows that there’s a loose grating built into the grass alongside the Trill Mill path before the old tunnel opens up above the river. None of the adults would have thought of this, of course. None of the adults need hiding places from which to ambush the gyptian children.

“Ssshh,” Pan says, stopping a few feet ahead of her and turning into a moth, squeezing out of the grating. After a second, he flutters back down.

“It’s really a window,” he says. “Right by some trees. There’s a soldier at each end of the path.”

“Great,” Lyra whispers back and goes up on her toes to lift the grate loose. It squeals and she freezes, heart thudding, but Pan is quick to report that the soldiers haven’t moved. She hauls herself out and carefully puts the grating back, banking on darkness and silence to keep her hidden, and already making up a story in her head for if she gets caught.

She doesn’t.

Two seconds later, she is standing in the starlight of another world.

*

By morning, Lyra’s feet and back are hurting and she’s really hungry. She’s been wandering this new Oxford for hours. There are college buildings where she expects them to be, mostly, but the roads are covered in this weird hard black substance, and there are _far_ more cars, and everything looks tacky and hard and bright, not like the wooden shopfronts and bowed windows of her own dear streets. She passes groups of adults smoking and drinking outside venues pounding with music and bright lights. They’re all wearing such little clothing – short skirts that show off most of their legs and some of the men aren’t wearing shirts. Lyra’s only seen the dockers down at the wharf in such a state of undress before. It’s not _right._

The sky lightens in bursts around her. She naps in a tree in a park for a bit and then gets up as the city roars back into life. Suddenly there are people everywhere. They all have these white things in their ears or black things on their heads. Big red vehicles career down the streets. Pan turns into a mouse and sneaks into her pocket. She can feel his heartbeat thrumming scared against her own. She could go back. She could just go back to the window and go home and forget about this terrifying, loud, alien place but…but. She came to find Elaine’s husband. She’s an adventurer. She’s braver than this.

But the thing is, she has not the first clue where to look for a missing husband and son. She says as much to Pan who sighs, and says silently, _well ask, silly._ So she does what she does best; runs smack-bang into a friendly-looking adult, trips over, and starts crying.

The woman – it is a woman, with fiery red curls, a kind smile, and a thick Irish accent – helps her up, dusts off her knees. “Hey, kid, are you ok?”

“I’m lost,” Lyra sniffles, making sure she sounds as pathetic as possible and hunching her shoulders down. The woman’s face softens even more and she tugs Lyra out of the way of passing people into a quieter street.

“You’re lost? Do you need help finding your parents?”

“Yes please,” Lyra says. Then, blurting, “I ran away last night but I didn’t mean to! It was my brother. He dared me. I don’t know how to get home.”

“Oh sweetie,” the woman says, all sympathy. _Good choice,_ she hears Pan whisper. “What’s your name? Do you know your address?”

Lyra shakes her head. “Lyra Parry. But my dad’s called John and my brother’s called Will.”

“There’s a physicist called John Parry, I think,” the woman says, absently. “No worries. I’ll take you to college with me. The porter will be able to help.”

The college really isn’t far away, and it isn’t one that Lyra recognises, tucked away behind a church on a backstreet. Lyra acts shy and hides behind her hair to make sure she doesn’t give anything away.

“Lost kid,” the woman tells the porter. “Can you look her up for me?”

“Of course, Dr Malone,” the porter says, and Lyra forgets herself for a second, stares at her. She hadn’t realised women scholars could be as young as this. The only one she’s met – very briefly, at a dinner – had been practically fossilised.

The porter finds her a glass of juice and cleans her knees for her, and then Dr Malone offers to go in the car with her back to the house because they’d found an address but not a number, whatever a number is. It’s in Wolvercote, down the end of Port Meadow. Lyra’s only made it out as far as there a few times, and she stares out of the window as the car sweeps near-silently along the roads. Dr Malone tries to make conversation but Lyra doesn’t want to give herself away, mumbles one word answers about school and her favourite subject and her pets. The second they pull up in the driveway of a pretty, rambling house with lots of trees and a lawn full of very long grass, Lyra is tumbling out of the car and up the steps to the blue front door, hammering on the bear knocker with all her might. Dr Malone follows her at a more sedate pace, but the door is creaking open and there’s a boy standing there. He’s only a little bit older than Lyra but has brown skin and short, tightly-curled hair and is wearing the same weird clothes as everyone else in this world. That’s all Lyra sees before she’s flinging herself at him.

“Will! I’m so sorry!”

On instinct, he catches her and she hisses quickly in his ear, “I’m Lyra, I’m your sister, I know where your mum is. Act like you know me.”

His entire body stiffens but by the time she’s pulled away, he seems to have caught onto how important this is. He takes her upper arms and looks kind of convincing. At least Lyra hopes he is because if Dr Malone starts asking questions then it’s all going to go wrong.

“Lyra, what happened?”

“You told me to run away!”

“I didn’t _mean_ it you silly! Why did you think I meant it?”

“All ok?” Dr Malone asks. “Is your dad about, Will?”

“He’s in the shower,” Will says politely, letting go of Lyra who scampers into the house behind him. The hall is quite dusty but there’s a brightly coloured rug on the floor and wooden stairs going up and up and up. “Thank you for bringing her back. Lyra, what do you say?”

“Thank you Dr Malone!” Lyra chirps.

“No worries,” Dr Malone says, smiles. “Have a good day.”

Will shuts the front door and instantly his smile drops. “I don’t have a sister.”

“I _know,_ ” Lyra says, folding her arms. Pan squeaks a warning from inside her pocket. “But I had to get to you _somehow_.”

“Who _are_ you?”

“Lyra Belacqua, ward of Jordan College.”

“Jordan…?”

“It doesn’t exist in this world. That’s where your mum is, by the way. Her name’s Elaine Parry and she’s a poet. She talks about you all the time.”

“She…” Will stares at her. She notices that his hands are shaking. “She’s alive?”

Lyra nods and keeps nodding until Will puts his hands over his eyes. When he looks back up his face is tight and his eyes have gone all wet and swimming, like Roger’s do when he hurts himself.

“Come on,” he says, and brushes past her towards the back of the house. She follows, muddy shoes scraping on the floorboards. The windowsills are also very dusty and the back windows are a bit dirty. Will pushes a door behind the staircase open into an office like the scholars except not quite as messy. There are letters and numbers across a board on one wall and sunlight streaming through the window, a cat curled up on the desk and a man sitting in the armchair, staring into space. He is pale and unshaven and his shirt is crumpled and there are big purple bags under his eyes, but he smiles when he sees Will, reaches out to him.

“Morning, sweetheart,” he says.

“Were you up all night again?” Will asks, and then, before the man can answer, “Dad, this is Lyra. She says she knows where Mum is.”

There is a moment of complete silence. Lyra feels like her feet are glued to the ground as the man’s – John’s – eyes find hers.

“What?” he asks, sitting up, suddenly sharp.

“She’s in my world. There’s a window between them down near the Trill Mill. She accidentally came through it without realising and then got stuck cause she ain’t got a dæmon.”

“A…”

“Hello,” Pan says, wriggling out of Lyra’s pocket, flying to the floor as a bird, and then changing into a cat again.

“Dad, what’s that,” Will says, clearly scared, taking a big step backwards. Lyra folds her arms and frowns at him. Pan isn’t something to be _scared_ of.

John gets up, crouches down, and extends a hand to Pan, who steps forward and sniffs at his fingers. “It’s ok - I think.”

“Don’t touch,” Lyra snaps, seeing that he’s about to do just that. “You ain’t supposed to touch someone’s dæmon. It’s wrong.”

“Thank you for telling me,” John says and pulls his hand back, watches them both for a second. Pan sits back too and begins to wash his ears.

“Dad, it’s a talking _animal_ ,” Will says. His arms are wrapped around himself and he hasn’t taken his eyes off Pan, but he steps a bit closer. Maybe this is what Elaine meant about Lyra’s world being weird to her. Maybe most people are scared of anything that’s different.

“I’m her soul,” Pan corrects. “I won’t hurt you. My name’s Pantalaimon, but most people call me Pan.”

“Ok,” Will says, warily, but he steps another bit closer to them again, if back into John’s side. John stands and tucks an arm around him.

“You have to believe me,” Lyra says after a tense moment of silence. “I’m not lying. I lie a lot but not about this. Elaine misses you and she’s really sad.”

John takes a very deep breath and says, “We miss her too. Tell me again, from the beginning.”

So Lyra does, Pan chipping in when she forgets details. She tells them about meeting Elaine, about her lack of a dæmon, about what the Palmerian Professor said about the Magisterium murdering her if she left. How Elaine chose life, instead of risking it. About the engagement ring with the meteorite in it that Elaine had let Lyra look at, thrilled at the thought of rocks from the stars. John’s fists are clenched and he’s even paler by the end of it, Will glued to his side, eyes wide and face slightly grey. When she’s done, John passes a hand over his eyes.

“Well,” he says, voice hitching.

“Mum doesn’t tell most people about the ring,” Will says. “Does she, Dad?”

“No,” John says, heavy. “No, she doesn’t.” Then, “can you take us to her, Lyra?”

“Right this second, if you want,” Lyra shrugs, and then, as her stomach growls, “but can I have breakfast first, actually?”

*

Will doesn’t know what to feel as Dad boosts him up and over the fence of Christchurch meadow. The night is very dark and they’re being very careful not to get caught. Lyra slid through like she was born for it and is already half off into the dark – Pan owl shaped and swooping ahead of her. Will’s still a bit frightened of them but he’s trying to be brave like Dad is, and anyway, most of his head is taken up with thoughts of Mum. Everything is rushing back: how she’d dropped him off at school that last morning and hadn’t been there to pick him up; how Dad had paced and paced as the day had dragged on and there was still no sign of her. The calls to the police, the interviews. Will crawling into Dad’s bed to cry only to find Dad sobbing too, both of them holding each other night after night after night, waiting for her to come home. That horrible visit from his grandparents three months later where they’d been saying things like, “well a woman like her” and “you should think about remarrying, for the boy’s sake,” and “really, we told you so John,” and Dad, angrier than Will has _ever_ seen him before, leaning forward to growl,

“You know nothing about my wife, nothing about my marriage, and nothing about love. I’m never going to stop searching or hoping, and I will _never_ remarry. Have I made myself clear?”

“You know we won’t leave the estate to you and the boy,”

“Do you really think I care? Will and I will be just fine without you.”

Except – just fine – means that mostly Dad is ok. He is. He’d taken care of Will just fine for the last year and half. He’d always been there whenever he’d said he was going to be, had taken Will to school, had spent time with him, had hugged him lots, had come to his football matches and his boxing tournaments. But he’s sad and he doesn’t talk to many people, and sometimes he has days where he can’t leave the easy chair in the office, where he stays up all night, running his wedding ring around his finger and staring into space. His friends from the army had showed Will how to take care of him on days like those, like his mum would have wanted – tea and omelette and toast and a blanket. Sometimes Will crawls into his lap and stays there until Dad hugs him back. Even if takes a long time, Dad always hugs him back.

But as the months went by, the missing had become worse. Will had tried to pay attention in school like Dad told him too, but it was hard to learn long division when it felt like there was a gaping, sucking hole where his heart used to be. It was hard to mess around with his classmates on the playground when all he wanted to do is curl up in a ball and scream until he couldn’t hear the thoughts like _why did she leave us, why did she go away_ and then _did she not love us enough to stay._ Not that those thoughts made any sense because Mum was _always_ telling them that she loved them – three times a day, four, five. Will was never surer of anything in his life until she vanished.

And then this morning when Lyra had flung herself and her talking dæmon animal into their house and declared that Mum was alive and safe and that they could go to her, _right this second._ It had felt like the ground was sinking away beneath his feet, like the shaky foundations he’d been building without a mother had collapsed, just like that.

Dad had reluctantly decided that _right this second_ wouldn’t be sensible; if Lyra could sneak through, past _soldiers,_ in darkness then they’d have a better chance waiting for dark too. He’d made breakfast for them all and then a bed for Lyra to have a nap because she’d apparently been up all night looking for them. They’d packed bags. Dad had written a letter to his friends for a reason he didn’t tell Will. And then they’d waited and tidied and cleaned because they’d been unable to settle to anything else.

“Do you think she’s telling the truth?” Will had asked.

“I don’t know,” Dad had said, honestly, the way he’s always been honest. “But she’s just a kid and there’s no way she could fake something like Pan. We have to try. Are you ok with us trying?”

“Yes,” Will had said. “Yes, Dad. I want Mum back more than _anything._ ”

“I know you do. Me too. But be careful, ok? Don’t get too excited until we know what’s really going on.”

“Ok,” he’d said again, and he’d hugged Dad tightly, unable to put a name to the scared, bubbling feeling that had started in the middle of his chest.

The meadow is quite damp and they walk quickly and quietly down towards the river. They walk this way a lot on the weekends but it feels different in the dark, like anything could be hiding behind the trees and waiting to jump out. It’s cold too, and Will huddles closer into his jumper, hangs on tightly to Dad’s hand. Down by the river, right behind a tree, Lyra and Pan have stopped and turned to look at them.

“Just here,” she whispers, and Pan turns into a moth and disappears. When they get to where Lyra’s standing, Will can see the window, like someone took a pair of scissors and cut a long opening in the air. The edges are slightly silvery, and you can only see it straight on. The land on the other side looks just the same. If he didn’t know it was there he doesn’t think he would see it at all. He thinks about the Alice in Wonderland books he and Dad have been reading together lately and wonders whether Alice felt like this before she fell down the rabbit hole.

“Safe,” Pan says as he flutters back through. “Come on, be quick!”

Lyra shoots them both a toothy smile before disappearing through the window. Will squeezes Dad’s hand. His heart is beating too fast. He closes his eyes. Dad squeezes it back and steps through too, tugging Will with him. There’s a tiny bit of a push and then his feet are on the same grass as they’d just left. The trees are in the same positions, shadowy in the dark, and the window hangs silent and ghostly behind them. Nothing at all has changed apart from the light on the path, burning orange, and the pair of men under it with big guns across their shoulders. Lyra is already tiptoeing off in the direction of the river which they can all hear through the trees. Will and Dad are following her but then suddenly one of the soldiers barks:

“Who’s there?”

They all freeze, dead still. Will wants to cry and chokes it down. The soldier is coming closer and Will hopes that he’s going to miss them, that if he can't see them, they can't see him. There is a moment of total and utter quiet and then an intake of breath.

“What are you-”

“Run!” Lyra shrieks, and hurtles past them. Pan is a big bird flying low over the soldiers' heads. Without a second’s hesitation, Dad takes off after her, tugging Will along with him. There’s a loud crack and something whistles past them. His chest is burning. Another crack. Another. Dad says a bad word and speeds up and Will is tripping over his feet as they make it past the gate of an enormous building, down a flight of stairs, over a bridge, and out onto a street. There are footsteps behind them, loud, lots of them. The world is spinning. They sprint up the hill and there is the whine of an engine coming up the road behind them. Will can’t see a thing but suddenly they are careening to a halt.

Lyra has run into a man with a cigarette glowing in the dark. The enormous white leopard next to him has jumped to its feet.

“Get inside,” he snaps, glancing down the street and gesturing at the building behind him. “ _Now_.”

They do as he says. Will is panting heavily, trying and failing to breathe. The man at the desk has a dog next to him. The dog says, “my lord…”

“Hide them. Back room. I’ll deal with the soldiers,” the man with the leopard says and digs into his pocket, flings several big gold coins down onto the desk.

“Right away, my lord,” the man with the dog says and leads them down a steep flight of stairs and into a small room, with a big fireplace and big armchairs and big wooden tables. Everything is gold and red and brown, and it looks like the private dining room at Dad’s college that Will’s been into a few times. It smells like smoke and age and dirt, but the kind that’s been there for years and years.

“You ok, kids?” Dad asks, still slightly breathless. He kneels down, runs his hands over Will’s shoulders and arms, takes his elbows. “You doing ok?”

“Fine,” Lyra chirps; when Will looks over she’s already climbed onto the by the fire and sits with her legs swinging back and forth. She doesn’t like anything’s wrong at all; if not for how red her cheeks are, you wouldn’t even know she’d just been running for her life.

“Yes,” Will says, because if Lyra’s fine then he’s got to be fine too. They’re safe and Dad’s here - those two things mean it’s going to be ok, “Dad, your head!”

“Oh,” Dad says, putting a hand up to his forehead. He frowns. “Ow.” Then, to Will, “It’s ok. Just a scratch. Head wounds bleed a lot.”

The door suddenly slams open and shut again. The man with the leopard is marching across the room, grabs Lyra by the ear and pulls her off the table viciously. “Lyra Belacqua,” he says, obviously furious, “what the _hell_ do you think you’re playing at?”

“Excuse _me,_ ” Dad says, straightening to his full height and stepping in front of Will. Will has only ever heard Dad sound like that when speaking to his grandparents, or the neighbour he’s told Will is a horrible bully. “Let go of her _right_ this second.”

Will inches out behind Dad just in time to see the man give Dad a slow once up and down. The leopard huffs, and the man raises an eyebrow. “Who are _you_?”

“Let _go_ of her,” Dad repeats, unrelenting. The man raises an eyebrow but does as Dad says and lets Lyra go. She rubs at her ear, scowling, and he turns to her.

“You’re very lucky I don’t give you a damn good thrashing, young lady,” he says. “The Master is worried sick. Where have you been?”

Lyra doesn’t look at all scared of him and Will can’t decide whether she’s the bravest person he’s ever met or the most idiotic. “You know Elaine Parry at Jordan-”

“I work with Mrs Parry, girl. I know her better than you do.”

“Well obviously not that well because this is her husband and her son. I went to get them from the other world.”

“You,” the man says, and then appears to run out of both words and the strength to stand. He sinks into the nearest chair. Lyra now just looks smug; she hops back onto her table and folds her arms.

“You foolish, _foolish_ girl,” the man says after a second, pinching his nose the same way Dad does when he’s thinking about something, “What possessed you to do such a thing?”

“We’re glad you’re back in one piece,” the leopard says. Her voice is very smooth and not at all like Will would have imagined a leopard to sound. Her green eyes are fixed on the man, and Will thinks she must be annoyed because her tail is lashing the way his own cat’s does whenever she’s upset.

“Lord Asriel Belacqua,” the man says after a second, sitting back up and offering a hand to Dad. “This young miscreant’s uncle. My dæmon, Stelmaria.”

“John Parry,” Dad says, shaking it. “My son, Will.”

Lord Asriel studies them both intently for a while. Will feels like something under the magnifying glasses they’d just started using at school to look at frogspawn. He doesn’t like feeling like frogspawn, so inches behind Dad again. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“I was-”

“We’re going to have to wait an hour or so for those Magisterium bastards to stop rampaging the streets looking for you. Give them an hour to come to the conclusion that it was just locals making trouble. You should have your head seen to as well. Can’t bring you back to your wife injured, can we?”

“Oh alright then,” Dad says. He’s still quite tense and Will gets the sense that Dad isn’t very impressed with Lord Asriel, the same way he was never very impressed with Will’s teacher in Year Two who was nice to parents but not very nice to any of the kids.

The man with a dog – a servant, Will realises – brings them a tray. Hot chocolate for him and Lyra, and sparkling crystal glasses for Lord Asriel and Dad with a bottle of liquid the same colour as caramel.

“Go on, boy, amuse yourself with my niece,” Lord Asriel says brusquely, waving a hand. Will frowns at him but Dad gives him a look like, _be polite,_ so Will sighs and follows Lyra carefully down to the sofa at the other end of the room. Pan has turned into a leopard cub, mimicking Stelmaria, and they sit and drink in silence, not entirely sure what to say to each other.

“Why do you keep changing?” Will asks after a second, ignoring Lyra’s ridiculous foam moustache and tucking his knees to his chest. Pan scratches his ear with his back paw. “Stelmaria and the dog haven’t changed.”

“Because we’re kids,” Pan says.

“The Chaplain says it’s cause kids don’t know who they are yet. Your dæmon settles when you know,” Lyra continues in a voice of great superiority. Will decides that he is not going to be annoyed by it. Some kids always have things to prove and maybe Lyra is one of them, though he doesn’t know what on earth she would have to. She's the bravest person he's ever met.

“Oh,” he says.

“Pan never wants to settle though, do you?” Lyra asks and Pan shakes his head, changes into wolf cub and then back into a leopard to prove his point. Will wonders what it must be like to have part of you be an animal. Mum and Dad always used to laugh about people who forgot that humans were animals, used to say that just because we learned to light fire and be conscious doesn't make us any less a part of the natural world. They'd both found it really funny. Will hadn't got the joke, but guessed that he might when he was older.

After a while, Lyra begins to prattle about people and places Will doesn’t know, but he leans his chin on his knees and tries to listen because it’s better to pay attention to that rather than to how much he wants Mum right now. He’s pretty sure Lyra’s made most of these stories up but she’s a good storyteller so it doesn't matter.

Finally, Dad and Asriel finish talking and Asriel is standing, Stelmaria coming to her feet beside him and stretching just like Will’s cat.

“Let’s give it a shot, old fellow,” he says, and Will pinches himself hard, just to make sure he isn’t dreaming. He isn’t. He’s going to see Mum, finally, after all this time without her. But he can’t get too excited. He promised.

*

It’s quite late by the time the car pulls up to the college, but the flustered porter gets out of his office to greet Lord Asriel.

“Is Carne still up?” he asks.

“I believe so, my lord,” the porter had said, glancing over. Then, “Miss Lyra! What in heaven…”

“She is being dealt with,” Uncle Asriel says and Lyra shifts just a little bit closer to John Parry. It was nice that an adult stood up for her against her uncle. Since he and Elaine are basically the only two adults to have properly been on her side, it makes perfect sense in her head that they should be married. She stays closer to him than her uncle as they make their way through the first lamplit quad, Jordan glowing gold against the sky, and then through the ancient stone corridors towards the private quarters. It happens very suddenly. They are rounding a corner and suddenly there is Elaine coming towards them in a pretty green dress, her braids piled on her head, in conversation with the Master and a few other scholars.

John stops dead, and Lyra looks up, sees him cover his mouth with a hand. His eyes are full of tears and he doesn’t seem able to move.

Will definitely doesn’t seem to have the same problem. “Mum!” he shrieks and is barrelling down the hall towards her and into her arms, knocking her several steps backwards.

“Will?” Lyra hears Elaine says, and then her eyes come up and she sees John, and Lyra has never seen that look on anyone’s face before, the disbelief and love painted clear for anyone to see. “John!”

John is striding towards her too now and takes both of them into his arms. The scholars have backed off, and, as they all watch, the three of them are very abruptly a sobbing mess on the old, worn flagstones, clutching each other close. Lyra’s about to go and tell Elaine what she did, but Uncle Asriel grabs her sleeve before she can even set one foot forward.

“Not now,” he says. “They don’t need you.”

Lyra, stung, is about to protest when unexpectedly, eyes still on the Parrys, he continues: “You did a good thing today, Lyra.”

She stops staring at them to stare up at _him_ but he doesn’t look at her or say anything else. She suddenly feels warm all over. Terrifying Uncle Asriel thinks she did something _good._ Pan wriggles into her pocket and she holds the feeling close, watching the family she brought back together.

*

The next morning, Will comes to find her at breakfast. He’s wearing proper clothes now and his eyes are still slightly red but he’s smiling and keeps looking back to where Elaine and John are sitting far too close to each other at the table by the door, hands intertwined and watching him. Elaine waves at Lyra, who waves back. She hasn’t had a proper chance to talk to Elaine yet but she’s sure she will soon. Uncle Asriel had told her to give them space; she’s decided to do him a favour in return for being nice to her and actually listen for once.

“Morning,” he says, sliding onto the bench next to her.

“G’morning,” she replies through a mouthful of eggs. “What do you want?”

Other kids would be dented by this, she knows, but Will doesn’t even seem to care about her dismissive tone of voice. That means he might actually stick out the vicious hierarchy here – always a useful thing to have in an underling.

“I wanted to tell you that I think we’re going to stay. We’ve claimed the scholar thing-”

“Scholastic sanctuary,” Pan corrects.

“Yes, scholastic sanctuary,” Will nods. “That thing. We’re as stuck as Mum was, now. And anyway, we aren’t leaving her ever again.”

“Ok, that’s nice,” Lyra says, chewing thoughtfully. After the thought has finished forming, she throws her knife and fork down and bounds to her feet. “Come on!”

“What?”

She sighs and rolls her eyes, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt for being new. “If you’re going to stay, then Roger and I need to show you the roof.”

“Ok,” Will says, “let me just go tell my parents.”

“Goody-two-shoes,” Lyra snipes as he dashes off, but she’s smiling.

“I think he might be a good person to be friends with,” Pan says, becoming a bird and looping a tight circle around Lyra’s head. “Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Lyra says, watching him excitedly tell his parents something, hug his mum, and come running back towards her. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come and scream at me on Tumblr:@if-fortunate! I reblog some things and love to chat HDM :D
> 
> Also: the Trill Mill stream really is an underground river in Oxford you can get into in Christchurch meadow. There are lots of lurid stories about people discovering rotting Victorian skeletons down there! (Eliza's trivia of the day).


End file.
